The Way It Was
a memoir by
Tom PeacockForeword by Frye Gaillard
ISBN 13: 978-1-59948-081-7
~300 pages, $14.95Projected release date: September 10, 2007.
***Advance discount purchase price of $10 will be available until August 15, 2007.***
About the Author / Foreword / Sample
My friend Tom Peacock came a little late to the craft of writing. He was pushing 70 before he was caught in its grip, though in retrospect, his retirement avocation probably should not have been a surprise. Raised in Florida in the 1930s, Tom grew up in a family of story-tellers-Scottish immigrants who loved the promise of the country they had chosen, even as they nourished sweet memories of home. Starting some time in the 1980s, Tom set out to write about his parents, particularly his mother, who died when he was only 16. His younger siblings didn't remember her well, and his children, of course, didn't know her at all.
After a while, the vignettes and stories began to pile up, and the subject matter began to expand. Not only were there memories of a Florida boyhood, an age of innocence in the Great Depression, there were also stories of tragedy and loss. And then, of course, there was World War II. Peacock was part of the Greatest Generation, those men and women who defended our freedom, and he realized as he began to write that he was seized with the need to celebrate his peers. There are stories here of people who later moved on to greater fame, but there are also those of the ordinary heroes-citizens and soldiers who merely did their part.
All in all, Peacock has produced, in the past twenty years, a portrait of a time that has slowly disappeared, slipping inexorably beneath the surface of memory. That was not his mission at the start. These are pieces that were meant to stand alone-verbal snapshots of a person or place, or some curious happening now hidden in the past. His recollections are rich in their array of characters-senators and preachers and women of the night-and his wry observations are deepened by the depth of his gentle understandings.
This is one of those fascinating books that can be read straight through from cover to cover. Or, if you like, you can just skip around, reading one story here, another one there, but in either case, the result will be the same. You'll be transported to The Way it Was, a time with all its foibles and flaws that is filled, nevertheless, with lessons and memories that should never be lost. With humor and heart, Tom Peacock has kept them alive. The rest of us are now the richer for it.
--Frye Gaillard
WHAT A FRIEND
On a recent blustery Sunday as a cold rain lashed at the stained glass, our congregation sang an old gospel hymn. In most Southern churches, that is not at all remarkable. Our choir, though, prefers Bach and other formal icons and it’s a rare Sunday that one leaves the service humming a tune. We don’t spend a lot of time gathering at the river or answering roll call up yonder, but once in a while—
We rose and began to sing “What a friend we have in Jesus, All our sins and griefs to bear, What a privilege to carry-- Everything to God in prayer”
Before we had sung a dozen bars I was flooded with memories, and while I continued to savor the words, found myself transported to a far away, familiar place. In a magical instant I was once again a carefree nine year old in Lakeland, Florida, in the summer of 1929.
We lived in a little frame house in a section called Country Club Estates, a typical Florida exaggeration. Country clubs were pretty scarce in those days and there certainly wasn’t one in our neighborhood.
My Florida, though, that emerged from the mists as we sang, was the sighing of the wind through the branches, the raucous excitement of splashing in the yet to be polluted lakes and the exploration of the piney woods which surrounded us. The sand was gray, soft and hot, a perfect breeding ground for the sandspurs that were the bane of all barefoot boys. We learned early to avoid the lair of the rattler, the coral snake and the cottonmouth. And we crept softly as we spied on the great land turtle digging her underground bungalow. Whooping, my brother and I charged after rabbits and squirrels, firing volleys at them from homemade slingshots. They were as safe as in their mothers’ arms. We never came close. For six and nine year old siblings, it was a close to paradise as two little boys can be.
Our home was in what today we would call suburbia; back then it was country. Supper was always early ; and afterward our parents sat near the sputtering radio and listened to the evening news. On summer evenings we rocked a while on the porch, heard the mosquitoes whining against the screen and marveled at another spectacular sunset. And just at dusk thousands of killdees put on their aerial circus-diving, wheeling, soaring, falling through the failing light as they gorged laggard insects, homeward bound.
Dad and his brother Bill owned a small machine shop. In the late twenties it produced at best a marginal living. Dad wore bib overalls, drove an ancient pickup truck, worried about the business and labored over his inventions.
Mama kept the company books. She did so in the late evenings. The daylight hours were spent rearing children and refereeing their activities.
She also kept the rabbit cages swarming with rabbits, another of Dad’s projects.
It seemed that he had read somewhere that rabbits as a sideline were surefire money makers. All one had to do was feed them a few Purina pellets, a little water and a handful of alfalfa and nature would do the rest. His miscalculation was in breeding them in an area where a person could hardly step outside without stumbling over a couple of wild rabbits. So, the market for pelts and meat had some serious competition. In providing our family with food, the enterprise was a howling success. The amorous little rascals reproduced faster than we could eat them.
Mama was industrious, frugal, and as is the case with most Scottish immigrants, totally dedicated to the work ethic. She permitted herself a single indulgence. Every Monday a woman came and did the laundry. Her name was Rosa Thompson. She was large, deliberate, and black, washed and ironed our clothes and was paid the prevailing rate of a dollar a day. Realizing that this smacks of gross exploitation, I remind myself that my father’s strenuous efforts at the machine shop frequently produced no more than fifteen dollars for a six day week. Bread was ten cents a loaf; gasoline eighteen cents a gallon.
There were no city buses to Country Club Estates, or for that matter anywhere else in Lakeland. So, Mama drove us to fetch Rosa in the morning and took her home at the end of the day. She lived near the ball park in a narrow wooden house that had once been white. It was on a dirt street with not a blade of grass in sight. There were children around and one sensed there was an older adult in the house, watching them while Rosa earned her pathetic wages.
Once, as we waited for Rosa, I looked out the car window into the face of a black boy about my age. I said, “Hey!” He stared and said nothing. I can still see the mournful face and its sad, expressive eyes.
Indeed he had a good deal to be mournful about. There was total segregation and about the best he could hope for would be the janitor’s job at the Ford dealership. Rosa’s house was less than two miles from city hall, had no plumbing and no running water. Schools were separate but far from equal. We were poor, but could strive for something better. Rosa’s son had no key to striving; Martin Luther King, Jr. was barely six months old.
In this environment which could have produced total despair, Rosa came to our house and washed our clothes. And while she worked, Rosa sang this remarkable verse:
“Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged
Take it to the Lord in prayer...”
Regardless of circumstance, she was able to sing about the Jesus she knew as a personal friend. This was the only song I ever heard from her, but sing it she did, in a clear soft contralto. She knew that the One to whom she was singing could hear her without amplification.
About this time, without any democratic dialogue at all, Mama decided that I was ready for some new responsibilities. In addition to normal chores like raking the lawn and cleaning my room (occasionally), she entrusted me with the care of the rabbits and the task of butchering and dressing at least three a week and even then we were losing ground. She also designated me as Rosa’s helper.
I did not enjoy killing and cleaning the rabbits, although doing it had no visible effect on my appetite. Helping Rosa was a lot more fun.
Our outdoor laundry was a low wooden rack which Dad had built alongside the one car garage. On Monday mornings I placed three large galvanized tubs on the rack and a fourth on a makeshift hearth about twenty feet away. I filled the fourth tub, built a fire under it and waited for the water to boil. When it did, I dipped the scalding liquid into the first tub on the rack. Tubs two and three were filled with cold water. The third tub, which Rosa called the “second wrenching” also contained a substance called “bluing.” Why turning water blue would cause shirts, towels and sheets to be whiter than normal was then and is now a mystery. Once the first tub was filled with hot water, I topped the fire tub again and reheated it. Oxydol soap powder was sprinkled in, and we boiled most of our clothes, stirring them occasionally with an old broom handle.
Garments were fished out of the scalding water and deposited in tub one where Rosa stood ready with a strong carbolic bar of Octagon soap. She placed a corrugated washtub into the steaming clothes and began a slow, rhythmic up and down motion.
While she scrubbed, she sang:
“Can we find a friend so faithful? Who will all our sorrows share? Jesus knows our every weakness, Take it to the Lord in prayer.”
There was a hand operated wringer bolted to the end of the rack. As Rosa removed the clean clothes from the blue rinse, I cranked and she passed them through the rollers. We joined hands to take the sheets and other large articles to the clothes line where the hot Florida sun was our only dryer. Throughout the entire process she never missed a beat.
“Are we weak and heavy laden?
Cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge,
Take it to the Lord in prayer.”
She knew the hymn so well that she didn’t have to concentrate. Interspersed with the melody was sage advice on how I should behave, stressing honesty and abstention from things I never knew existed. This was pretty heady stuff for a nine year old. She also vowed she would take the hide off my skinny back if I dropped a wet towel in the sand. We laughed as she tried to teach me her hymn, and we were friends.
When the washing was complete and Rosa had gone in the house to start the ironing, I hung the tubs on pegs, doused he fire and sneaked away before Mama realized that I was unemployed. It was a good feeling, knowing that Rosa and I had done something useful together.
As the cold North Carolina rain continued to pelt the windows, and the congregation reveled in the familiar words, we sang the final verse.
“Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?
Take it to the Lord in prayer,
In his arms He’ll take and shield thee,
Thou wilt find a solace there. “
As the last notes died, my awareness of Florida, Rosa and my boyhood slipped into the mists of memory and I was glad to be warm and dry with family and friends. But I know that at some time we shall again leave the majesty of Bach and the choral splendor of Rutter and sing once again again of the friendship of Jesus.
And on that day I shall, for a few moments, be nine. In the evening I shall hear the sighing of the wind in the great pines, listen for the plaintive cry of the night bird, and at daybreak see Lake Parker as smooth and flat as a sheet of glass. Its surface will mirror the exquisite pink of the sunrise and in the shallows a graceful white heron will be poised on one foot, alert for a careless minnow. Mama will remind me to feed the rabbits and Rosa will tell me to start the fire.
Tom Peacock, born 1920, grew up in Lakeland, Florida. He was educated in local schools and the University of Florida, is a veteran of World War II, and served in the Army Air Force as a pilot. For many years he was president of a major Southeastern leasing company and began writing memoir and short narratives after he retired. His writings have appeared in many magazines, papers and several anthologies including Tis the Season, which he also edited. He and his wife, Marie, have lived in Charlotte since 1948. They enjoy their children and grandchildren.